Biofuel may clean up as world farm prices flounder
Fuel ethanol distilled from crops such as corn and rapeseed could be the solution for countries seeking an outlet for huge agricultural surpluses.
A sunshine limit to growth
Sustainable development based on prevailing patterns of resource use is not even theoretically conceivable.
The coming helium shortage
Where will you be when the world runs out of helium? It’s surprising how many scientists and nonscientists alike are oblivious of the pending helium shortage. But it is a fact—we will run out of helium.
Can Organic Farming “Feed the World”?
Do we really need to embark upon another risky technological fix to solve the mistakes of a previous one? Instead, we should be looking for solutions that are based on ecological and biological principles and have significantly fewer environmental costs.
After Oil
The weightless economy still has dirty old oil pumping through its veins, as the recent fuel blockades demonstrated, says David Fleming. In the next ten years, the growing demand for oil will permanently overtake a shrinking supply — playing havoc with price. Why are western governments doing nothing to prepare?
Revisiting The Limits to Growth: Could The Club of Rome Have Been Correct, After All? (Part One)
Over the past few years, I have heard various energy economists lambast this “erroneous” work done. Often the book has been portrayed as the literal “poster child” of misinformed “Malthusian” type thinking that misled so many people into believing the world faced a short mania 30 years ago.
Revisiting The Limits to Growth: Could The Club of Rome Have Been Correct, After All? (Part Two)
The world probably cannot wait another 30 years to begin pondering whether we could begin to experience problems and sheer limits to non-renewal energy consumption.
Safe to breath
The Guardian recently ran an article titled: “The oxygen crisis: Could the decline of oxygen in the atmosphere undermine our health and threaten human survival?)
Not to worry. The O2 released from photosynthesis comes from H2O. Thus there will never be a shortage of material for the production of O2 so long as there is water on this planet. There is no “peak oxygen.”
Oil: Are We Running Out?
Predictions of imminent oil shortages have been made throughout the 20th century. Although all previous predictions have been false, in recent years a new generation of predictions based on the Hubbert model have become ascendant and attracted media attention.
Fair warning? The Club of Rome revisited
Almost thirty years ago a book was published which challenged one of the then core assumptions of economic theory – that the Earth was infinite and would always provide the resources needed for human prosperity.
The Imminent Peak of World Oil Production
Presentation to a House of Commons All-Party Committee on July 7th 1999.
THE END OF CHEAP OIL
In 1973 and 1979 a pair of sudden price increases rudely awakened the industrial world to its dependence on cheap crude oil. Prices first tripled in response to an Arab embargo and then nearly doubled again when Iran dethroned its Shah, sending the major economies sputtering into recession. Many analysts warned that these crises proved that the world would soon run out of oil. Yet they were wrong.
